While Germany and France call for the need of a united Europe to enhance security, jointly manage the challenges under which it wobbles (terrorism, immigration, nationalism, extremism …) and recovery of the identity and the founding values of the Union, the eastern Europe advocates for a more radical policy: the closing of the borders and the immediate expulsion of immigrants.

Although the European Union established the immigration agreement with Turkey by which repatriated immediately to refugees arriving illegally to Europe to Turkey in exchange for 3,000 million euros, the immigrants and refugees continue desperately crossing the fences erected in the Balkan countries (FYROM, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovenia in particular) to continue its path towards Europe, by increasingly unsafe ways due to greater security and border control, exposing themselves to traffickers, warlords and other penalties. At a summit earlier this week between the European leaders, the European Council President Donald Tusk ruled that it should end the route of the Balkans while he defended Merkel’s proposal to strengthen the performance of FRONTEX to end the illegally entrance to Europe and the need for new agreements, similar to that established with Turkey, to regulate this phenomenon with countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and north African partners.

On the other hand, the threat of jihadism in the Balkans is a muted situation but increasingly worrisome. It is well known that the region boasts a high Muslim population (especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and Kosovo) in a complex social political framework which have not yet healed the wounds of the war in Yugoslavia and the ethnic and social differences. Another feature of the Muslim population of the Balkans is that most are situated in rural areas and they practice a more traditional Islam (the municipalities of Tuzla, Gradacac, Kalesija and Lukavac have high representation of Wahhabism). Bosnia-Herzegovina is the great crossroads lately, because it has the highest proportion of Muslim population, plus the 1990 war was where most Islamic extremist movements were stoked to link the Bosnian War as a saint war (the Bosnian leader Alija Izetbegovic stated that one of its objectives was to establish an Islamic state organized according to the Sharia law, not only in Bosnia but in all Balkan territories, where once the Muslims had ruled; the son of Izetbegovic, Bakir Izetbegovic, elected in 2010 as Bosnian member of the presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina, has inherited his father’s aspirations).

But it is that even after September 11th, the jihadist activities have been stoked in Bosnia, where it has been found the presence of training camps and the arrival of funds to finance jihad by Al Qaeda. Currently, police in Bosnia seeks to cut the jihadist secret corridor that exists from Albania to northern Serbia, where followers of Daesh found refuge in remote and rural areas to extend their jihad, in silence for the moment. Bosnia has, therefore, along with the Islamic communities in Albania, Serbia and Kosovo, in an objective and conducive area for expansion and influence of jihadism promoted by groups like Al Qaeda or Daesh, a new core settlement in addition to the forged in the Khorasan Peninsula (which includes part of Pakistan and Afghanistan) and in the north Africa.

But the situation in the Balkans does not welcome only situations that we already have heard or known, like immigration and Jihadism, but in the last week Bosnia has drawn attention with a controversial referendum while a new country between Serbia and Croatia is trying to get international recognition: Liberland. Bosnia-Herzegovina has remained politically stable with a system of divided government, but with a growing ethnic division, who are not linked to each other (Bosnian Serb-of the Republic of Srpska, Muslims and the Croatian Christian minority). Given this, the Republic of Srpska in Bosnia, broken and complex, has resumed a topic not fully healed after the end of the 1990’ war: the independence of the Serb-majority area of the country. Undoubtedly, the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina, completely dependent on foreign aid, hinder the political and economic stability of the region, further increasing the insecurity of the Balkans.

The shelter of a larger jihadist movement in the Balkans, the destabilization by the constant and uncontrolled movements of immigration and the precarious economic situation, plus the increasingly tense situation in the East of Europe for the further militarization of Russian-European line, and the threatening and weak south conflicts (in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan border), reinforce a situation in which anyone is interested at all, neither Europe nor neighboring Russia.